Did we evolve from monkeys?

Sometimes when you look at Dallin, you think monkey. He uses his feet as if they were hands. A lot of babies suck on their thumb. Not Dallin. He prefers his toes. He will pull them up himself or see them pulled up half way during a diaper change and think he might as well grab his toe and put it in his mouth. Mmm good.

He also uses both his feet and his hands to play with toys. If his hands are too far away from the toy, he will improvise and use his feet.

Did we really evolve from monkeys or was it a frog? Poor Dallin was destined to act like a frog from the moment he was brought into his nursery. Dallin's nursery is decked out in a frog prince theme. Somehow the word got out that this was our theme and so both baby showers included many gifts with frogs on them. I would say that 80% of Dallin's clothes between zero and 6 months had a frog on them. So of course he acts like a frog. Dallin loves to jump. His legs are always moving. If you hold him up in the air with his legs free, they wiggle and jump around. If he is standing up he will immediately start jumping. So guess what Dallin will be for Halloween...you guessed it, a frog!

Dallin in his crib with his favorite blanket.

Fun at the Zoo

While we were in Utah, Dallin went to the zoo for the first time with our friend Lori and her kids, Nikki and her family, and Gram. The highlight of the trip was the Merry Go Round and the elephant show (at least Zane and I enjoyed the elephant show.) I’ve never seen elephants do tricks and so we were amazed as we watched the elephant perform for her trainer. Here are the highlights. Lori's daughter Mandy, 3 years, loved to push Dallin in his stroller. He is even better then a baby doll because he laughs and moves so much although he is a lot heavier and harder to push.
Dallin's look of terror at the white alligator behind him.
Dallin was "all done pictures." He wanted to do something more exciting.

He loved the Merry Go Round.

Pretending to be gophers!

Family picture at the zoo.

All the kids together.

Meeting Zane's family

We flew up to Utah on September 27th so that Dallin could meet the rest of Zane's family who weren't able to come to Houston. We spent a week there running around from house to house trying to see everyone. There were many members of my extended family that we weren't able to see because Zane does have 7 brothers and sisters, so we spent most of our time with them. Sorry. We stayed at Zane's younger sister's house, Nikki and Mike, with thier two boys. Last time we came to Utah we stayed the night in different people's home almost every night so that we could visit more, but with Dallin now, that seemed too hard. Nikki's boys are Dallin's age, so he had a great time playing with their toys.

Dallin with Brayden, 1 year, and Brigg, 3 years old. Thanks for the shirt Carolee. This is Dallin's first of many BYU shirts!

Dallin with Brayden on the swings for the first time. He loved the swings. The slide was ok, but the swings were the best!

Everyone knows that Dallin loves to jump. All his toys at home are jumping toys, so being on a trampling was a lot of fun for Dallin. We are just getting him ready for basketball.

We went to Gardener Village with Zane's family (It is a lot like Old Town Spring). All the witches out for Halloween!

With so many cousins who liked to play with Dallin, he was always entertained. This made it nice for Zane and I as we ate at a restaurant. His cousin Eli entertained him (or terrorized) while Zane and I enjoyed socializing with his family.

Besides meeting Zane's family, the main reason for going to Utah when we did was to see the play Aida. My sister Lindsey and I really wanted to see it and Zane, who hears the CD at home constantly, made it happen. He wins so many romantic points for flying us to Utah in order to see this play. Now I just need to convince him to take us to New York to see some other plays (or maybe London again!) So thanks Zane for taking me to one of my most favorite plays and thanks Lindsey for coming with us!

As we were flying out of Utah, we had a major scare. First we went to Continental to check in only to find out that although we bought the ticket with Continental, we were really flying with Delta. I had Dallin in the baby Bjorn, all 22 pounds, and dragged two suitcases behind me. Zane carried his very heavy backpack with two suitcases as we walked to the Delta terminal. Not fun. It took awhile to check in because of the new pay-for-each-bag system that Delta has (Zane is an elite member with Continental, so we avoided all this before. I guess there are some benefits to Zane traveling so much.) By the time we finally checked our bags and got to the security, we were running a little late. Then, the power goes out. Now remember that we had just left Houston after being out of power for two weeks. Any power outages now send fear to my heart. Luckily it only lasted a few minutes and we were sent through, now running, to get to our plane in time. On the plus side, Dallin would smile, kick and wave to everyone that walked past us. I was in heaven as people pointed to us and kept saying, "What a cute baby!"

Thanks everyone for taking us in and spending time with us. We loved seeing everyone!

The Cockroach

Along with the heat comes the bugs. I have never seen such big mosquitoes. They showed up the second week after the hurricane and made being outside miserable (actually they were inside our home too since the windows and doors were open so much.) We couldn't even run on our bike path because they were everywhere! Unfortunately, a cockroach also made it into my house. One night as I was reading in bed by flashlight, a cockroach flew onto my chest then flew away. I screamed of course and told Zane to find and kill it. This is very hard to do in the dark with only a flashlight to provide light. I spent a very miserable night with covers up to my chin and sweating to death because I was afraid of bugs crawling on me while I slept.

The next day as I was cleaning the bathroom, I found the cockroach in my bathtub. I'm not quite sure what happened, but all my anger and frustration from the situation was taken out on that cockroach. Dallin stared and then started crying as he watched his mom turn psycho as I tortured and killed the cockroach. Needless to say, that cockroach did not bother us again.

There is no picture of this which is probably a good thing. I'm not sure I wanted to see what I looked like as I went crazy.

There is a reason we don't camp in Houston during September!

Pictures from our neighborhood

Two main reasons we don't camp in Houston...heat and bugs!

It has been a long time since I have blogged. We lost power for two weeks with Hurricane Ike and then Friday night (Sept. 26) at 4:30 pm the lights in my living room came on as I was feeding Dallin. I felt like I was in heaven. Dallin and I danced around the house singing about how much we love power (well I danced and Dallin laughed at his mom.) We didn't get to enjoy it long though because we left for Utah the next morning on our vacation and were gone a week. Now we're home and life is getting back to normal.

Zane and I didn't sleep much Saturday morning as the storm was hitting. We kept getting out of bed to look out the windows. By 4 a.m. we knew the storm was over us. It was incredibly noisy and scary. We weren't sure if we could approach a window in case a tree flew in. We were fine though. Dallin slept through everything in his pack-'n-play safe in our bathroom away from windows.

By Saturday afternoon the rain died down enough for us to venture outside to see the damage. We had a couple of neighbors with trees down, but no damage to their house. We have a tree in our front yard that was attacked by a bug a couple of years ago and is weak. Zane staked it up, but we were worried we would lose it and it would crash into our house. The tree was safe though thanks to Zane's great staking job (or maybe someone up above was watching out for us.) My front flower garden was damaged. I had to pull one bush out and cut back the rest because they were so wind blown and were laying on their sides. I also had to pull out some flowers. It could have been a lot worse though, so we were grateful.

We knew we would lose power and the plan was when someone in my family got power, we would all move in with them. There are four of us in Houston, so we thought one of us would get power quickly. Of course this didn't happen. It really was ironic though because after a week the sections of our neighborhood all around us had power and the neighborhood next door to my mom's had power, but all four of us still didn't have power. We all lost power the same day and got our power back two weeks later on the same day. I blame it all on Jared, my brother. He bought a house on the same day as Zane and I right by us on the same power grid (we picked ours out first.) If he had chosen a house in another section, he would have had power and we could have moved in with him! Now we know what to look for next time we buy a house!

The first week wasn't too bad. Everyone was in the same situation, the food needed to be eaten up, and God sent us a cold front. We got together with my family every night and barbecued. My mom even pulled out a key lime pie one night. We invited friends and enjoyed socializing during our hurricane parties as we ate up our three month supply of meat. We started talking a lot more with our neighbors as we all looked out for each other. We went outside a lot to enjoy the weather and socialize since our cell phones and home line wasn't working. It felt like we were living in the dark ages. Zane would drive over to the Bishop's house to communicate with him and hope that he was home. The lack of phones was very frustrating, but it all was a new adventure, so we could deal with it. Zane figured out that it was more fun chain sawing then moving the logs, so he bought himself a chainsaw telling me it was for a good cause. He was in heaven going out with the boys everyday to cut some trees (we hope they asked first before they started cutting. Their testosterone levels were so high that any tree that had a little damage may have been cut down even if it didn't need it.) We took a lot of walks around the neighborhood as a family and every night read by flashlight. It wasn't all fun and games. By the end of the week I was getting sick of washing dishes by hand and by Thursday, my friend and I broke down and went to the laundry mat. I haven't been to one of those for a very long time, but with my friend with me, it wasn't too bad.

That was the first week. The second week, the cold front went away and Zane went back to work (but the phones started working). To make it even worse, the majority of our ward got power Sunday night. It is hard knowing everyone was getting back to normal, kids are going to school, and we were still suffering. By then the generator noise (imagine 40 lawn mowers on at the same time right by you) was really grating my nerves. We were part of the problem now too. The Saturday before when I heard we weren't getting power until the next Thursday and the weather was changing, I finally gave in and told Zane to get us a generator so we could have fans on us. Now I had extension cords all over my house which Dallin loved to roll to and put in his mouth which meant he could never be alone on the floor. We moved our mattress into the family room where we felt the breeze from our windows a little better and could hear Dallin over the battery-operated fans. I was pretty bitter and whiny on Monday and Tuesday of the second week. Wednesday morning I went to my friends house to watch her kids while I did laundry (she had power.) I also got to check my email and use the Internet for awhile. I became a whole new person after that. I came home renewed and decided to clean my house. My philosophy up to that point was if I can't see the dirt (we don't have windows in our bathrooms so they are very dark), then I don't need to clean it. Now I decided to turn on some fans and a lamp and clean the bathrooms! This is a little more time-consuming without power since you have to move extension cords into the room, move the fans and lamp, and then bring in Dallin. We did this from room to room, but it was worth it. I also got another gift Wednesday night...a window air conditioner that someone was done using. Life was much better after that and then even better when the power came on on Friday.

It is really interesting to go without power for so long. As Zane and I scrambled to get the house cleaned up Friday night and pack for our vacation, we kept going into dark rooms trying to find something and then it would hit us, turn on the light and you can find it easier. We just got used to doing without.

By the way, Dallin was an angel throughout. Cold milk, cold oatmeal cereal...he didn't care. He was bothered by the noise of the generator, but he did well.
I will never take for granted electricity ever again.